NNTP Gateway for Usenet ( Newsgroups ), Mailing Lists

The latest version: V3.5.0Alpha 1 (21 Jul 2005)

What is it?

This hack provides a gateway from vBulletin forums to the USENET. It allows forum members to read newsgroup messages as well as to send posts to the newsgroups. In a nutshell, it turns vBulletin forums into a basic function news reader.

For an added bonus, this package also supports mailing list archive and forum to mailing list gateway. The software retrieves messages from a pop3 account and import them into the forums threaded. It also allows a forums user to send messages to the mailing list by the forum posting interface.

Why?

The gateway will be appreciated by forum members who do not know how to set up a news reader, or people who do not have port 119 open in their network. A forum interface to read and post news are often considered to be better than a news reader.

The gateway adds more contents to your forums and allows the members to interact with wider audience. It is common to see new users signing up to use this feature.

History

This hack was originally coded by Gilby for vB2. I modified the hack to work with vB3 and have been maintaining and improving the hack. I have now done the modification for this to work with vB3.5.

The very original hack by Gilby can be found here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...7&page=1&pp=15

The vB3 version can be found here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=65152

Features

Some of the features and improvement include:

• Handles both newsgroup posts and mailing lists.
• Handles MIME encoded messages and attachment.
• Handles UUEncoded messages.
• Two Admin Control Panels for all settings.
• Automated installation.
• Correct thread implementation. All imported messages and posts sent to newsgroups will be threaded correctly according to References and Message-ID headers.
• Optional setting to thread by subject for mailing lists that strip references header.
• Imported messages will be searchable just like normal forum posts.
• Similar threads are built when the messages are imported if the system setting is on.
• Multiple attachments importing.
• Save attachment to database or file according to vB setting.
• Thumbnail created while importing image files.
• Multiple attachment post to newsgroup is also supported.
• Selectable X-No-Archive header honouring system.
• Light on system resources.
• Global Killfile to filter out unwanted messages. Killfiles can have OR and AND effectiveness.
• Strip footer by setting for incoming messages. Strips out repeated message footers.
• Built options to disable signatures and footers for out going messages.

Future development

• Traditional "> " lead posting interface.

What do you need and do not need?

You do not need to edit vB php files.
No need to manually run SQL.

Installation

Basically the AdminCP interfaces take care of installation as well as upgrade in the background. Back up your database first. The scripts can modify your database without alerting you!

Please follow the instructions in the readme.txt file for more details.

It is not a must to click "INSTALL" for this hack if you use it, I do try better answering the questions from people who do.

Support

Please post your support questions to this thread. Please check the FAQ in the second post within this thread first. It may be surprising, but it is possible your question is answered in the adminCP NNTP settings.

Please always provide more details about your problem. Examples and debug messages will certainly help. Well, if you don't even try to have some effort to compose your question, the answer you get may also not include much effort.

================== UPDATES ======================
Jul 21 2005 (release version 3.5.0 Alpha 1)

AdminCP xml file is written by Kadence.

• Ported to work with vB3.5.
• Existing bug fixes.
• Debug message can be sent by email or logged in vB Tast Scheduler.
• Known problem: image attachment thumb nail creation still needs work.
• Needs to be done: Documentation.

Quick installation instruction:
1) Upload files to their correct directory
2) Enter AdminCP, click on NNTP Settings once to install/upgrade. Change settings to your like.
3) Click on NNTP Groups once to install/upgrade.
3a) For new install. Run once
http://www.yourdomain.com/setlastmsg.php

Delete this file afterwards.
If you are upgrading from an older version. There is no need to upload this file. Actually this file should not be there except brand new install.

4)
Manually run in debug mode: http://forums.yourdomain.com/gateway.php?debug=1

[KW802]

Before I re-invent the wheel... does anybody have a little cleanup script to remove duplicate posts?

In the vB ACP there is the Remove Duplicate option to remove duplicate threads but it doesn't handle duplicate posts.

Anybody?

[Rik Brown]

Originally Posted by donnacha

I've had it installed for about 10 months and, in tests at that time, everything was working just fine with regard to both grabbing usenet groups AND posting. No, after upgrading to 3.6.4, a quick check reveals that posts made from within my forum are NOT actually getting posted to Usenet although they ARE appearing in my forum.

Is this a known problem with more recent versions of VB? For all I know, this might actually have started before I upgraded, I just don't know.

Anyone experiencing this particular problem?

Donnacha:

I just upgraded to vb 3.6.4 and exported messages in debug mode. It showed the messages being exported to my newsgroup server. I also logged onto the newsgroup server with my newsgroup reader and confirmed that my messages were there and that nothing looked strange in the headers, etc. Hopefully, it was just a temporary glitch for you?

Regards. -- Rik

[KW802]

Originally Posted by KW802

Before I re-invent the wheel... does anybody have a little cleanup script to remove duplicate posts?

In the vB ACP there is the Remove Duplicate option to remove duplicate threads but it doesn't handle duplicate posts.

Anybody?

Never mind. I ended up just creating a new "Remove Duplicate Posts" function in the ACP and that is doing the job fine. Taking forever to loop 1MM+ posts but it is working.

[donnacha]

Originally Posted by Rik Brown

Donnacha:

I just upgraded to vb 3.6.4 and exported messages in debug mode. It showed the messages being exported to my newsgroup server. I also logged onto the newsgroup server with my newsgroup reader and confirmed that my messages were there and that nothing looked strange in the headers, etc. Hopefully, it was just a temporary glitch for you?

Regards. -- Rik

Thanks for the feedback Rik, much appreciated.

Donnacha

[tpearl5]

Has anyone figured out a way to use regex or some other means to filter out certain spam? I'm getting a large amount of viruses and other crap coming through my feeds which is guming up the database. It takes a long time to delete these threads (1 - 5 min EACH)

Please help.

[mattpark]

Ladies and Gents,

I am offering $50 for the person who can resolve an issue with this mod, and update for 3.6

Please see this thread - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...73#post1145373

[KW802]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

Has anyone figured out a way to use regex or some other means to filter out certain spam? I'm getting a large amount of viruses and other crap coming through my feeds which is guming up the database. It takes a long time to delete these threads (1 - 5 min EACH)

Please help.

Did you try the killfile settings? (ACP => NNTP Gateway Options => NNTP Gateway Settings => Global Killfile) I have a few entries in my and it seems to be working as expected.

Originally Posted by mattpark

Ladies and Gents,

I am offering $50 for the person who can resolve an issue with this mod, and update for 3.6

Please see this thread - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...73#post1145373

Check your newgroup properties to see if the last message ID is getting correctly updated; if that that'll at least help narrow down where the problem is occuring. How many messages are you trying to download? There is a chance that if you're trying to bring in a new group that the cron job runs once, times out (which doesn't update the last message ID), run again, and tries to bring in all of the messages again.

[Rik Brown]

I'm guessing that about 95% of the messages that we import with the same title get properly merged into the prior thread of the same title. So perhaps 5% get orphaned and I have to merge them manually.

Is anyone getting a 100% proper merging of threads of the same thread title over time?

Thanks. -- Rik

PS:
I'm asking because if others are getting a 100% success rate, it may be a problem with our server (Although I've played around with setting delays between messages which doesn't, however, seem to affect things) and so it may be upgrade time.

[KW802]

Originally Posted by Rik Brown

Is anyone getting a 100% proper merging of threads of the same thread title or time?

For the most part. The only problem I have yet is where if a new thread arrives with a subject of something like "RE: Whatever..." and "Whatever..." doesn't already exist then it seems like it keeps creating new "RE: Whatever..." threads with each import (as opposed to keeping them all together). I haven't looked at the code lately in an attempt to fix it.

[woodp]

I'm running vB3.6.4 and Mailman 2.1.9 and using this script to provide gateways between vB and email.

vB->email: Took a while to figure out all the Mailman idiosyncrasies but this part of the script is running perfectly. I'm certain my users will love it.

email->vB: Struggling with this. I can send an email to MailMan's pop account and it will a) get properly reflected to all users, and b) show up in the MailMan archive. Or I can "reply" to an email from the gateway and it will also a) get properly reflected to all users, and b) show up in the MailMan archive.

What isn't working is vB reading the POP3 account and posting the "email" or "reply" into the message board thread. I'm not certain what might be going on except that MailMan is immediately reading the POP3 account, then clearing it and vB has nothing to import? What else could be going on?

Any ideas out there?

(Noob here - How do I click INSTALL to indicate I'm running this script?)